


Haunting at 30,000 Feet

by anticyclone



Category: Women of the Otherworld - Kelley Armstrong
Genre: Airplanes, F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:38:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/pseuds/anticyclone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime and Jeremy set out for a vacation in London. They're surprised when Jaime encounters a ghost where she never expected one: on their flight, before they even set foot in England.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunting at 30,000 Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> The title is a nod at the classic Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." From what I read, the flight Jaime and Jeremy are on would fly a bit higher. I hope you enjoy it.

The last place I ever expected to see a ghost was thirty thousand feet above the ground. 

I should have known better than to expect differently.

The ghost was an inch from my face. Her hair was tousled, dark eyes wide behind her glasses. The circles under her eyes looked like bruises. _"HELP ME!"_ she screamed, while I dug my fingers into Jeremy's arm. _"HELP US!"_

"We're not going to crash," I whispered, as quietly as possible, so no one would hear me. No one could hear me. The flight was packed. If I screamed, everyone would hear me.

The ghost didn't react, anyway. Not that she had been reacting to anything I'd been doing for the last three hours - including ignoring her. Jeremy had bought us first-class tickets for this flight and I hadn't been able to enjoy a second of it since the ghost made her first appearance, just after takeoff.

 _"HELP US!"_ The ghost flickered out of sight and reappeared with a yellow oxygen mask strapped to her face. _"We're going to crash!"_

That snapped something in me. Before I could stop myself, I barked, "We're _not_ going to crash!"

"That's the spirit, honey!"

Startled at the new voice, I jumped, and my hands lifted reflexively. I didn't blame Jeremy for moving his arm out from under my grip and covering my hand with his.

"This storm won't last long," the person across the aisle said. I stared at him without being able to take in a single detail of his appearance. The ghost flickered out again and, this time, didn't come back immediately. Our neighbor continued, "We'll be through these clouds in no time, nothing to worry about."

"Of - of course," I said, swallowing.

Jeremy started rubbing gentle circles into the back of my hand with his thumb. His hand was warm and steady. I tried to focus on that. It was hard to keep myself from twisting around in my seat, looking all over the plane for another sight of the ghost.

One ghost shouldn't be having this effect on me. I shut my mouth tight, trying to wrap up everything rolling around inside me and stow it away before someone noticed. Before the entire plane noticed. _Come on, Jaime, hold it together._

"Deep breaths," Jeremy murmured. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my temple. "Almost over."

"Promise?" I asked. Opening my mouth let a hysterical giggle escape and I quickly pressed my lips together again.

I had seen worse than this one ghost. Except this time there were witnesses, people who wouldn't shrug it off if I started talking to the air. I had been trapped places before, too. Except none of them had been this far off the ground…

The plane jumped in the air.

This time the ghost was behind me. " _I don't want to die!_ " she sobbed, reaching out one hand. It passed through my shoulder with a shock of cold before she was gone again.

I forced myself to meet Jeremy's eyes. "I don't think I can take much more of this," I whispered, twisting myself in my seat to face him more fully.

The seatbelt light had been on for several minutes. I only wished that had been when the screaming ghost started, too. If she was going to do this all the way to London I was going to end up screaming back at her.

Jeremy put an arm around me and tugged me against his side. Or as much as he could with us both strapped into our seats. I shut my eyes and tried to hold still. My easy-for-travel bun was starting to come undone against the back of my neck. This whole trip was supposed to be easy. No performances. No conference calls back to New York. No turning around at the last minute. No one else but the two of us.

But I should have known better. I should never have expected to get a break from the ghosts. I should have had a plan for dealing with one in a crowded, tight space, where everyone would see me trying to deal with anything invisible.

Losing my composure on a flight wouldn't just be bad. It'd end up with me being hauled off to the hospital, in handcuffs, or worse.

"Shh," Jeremy whispered, stroking my hair. "It's almost over. The wind is dying down already."

I doubted even a werewolf could hear that kind of thing over jet engines but I made myself nod anyway. I wanted to believe him. I didn't want to picture the moment I'd break, the moment I'd shout back at the ghost. I didn't want to imagine the flight attendant who'd given me an orange soda earlier holding me down and a straight jacket to go with the handcuffs.

Necromancers went crazy in the end. Everyone knew that.

Jeremy's voice cut through my mounting panic. "When the turbulence is over, I'll help you sleep. Okay?"

Putting a hand over my eyes, I shook my head. "I need to get a grip on myself," I said. I tried to keep my voice low enough not to travel to any of our neighbors. At least I knew Jeremy could hear me even if I could barely hear myself. 

He linked his fingers with mine and squeezed gently. His hand was warm against mine. "We'll talk it out," he murmured. I raised an eyebrow at him and he inclined his head at me. "Or we could play hangman."

The plane rattled in the air. Someone ahead of us dropped their book and it went rolling into the aisle. There was a shout of apology, some nervous laughter.

"Or meditate," Jeremy suggested, watching the book tumble.

"Have they invented the airplane you can take a bubble bath in?"

"Not the kind that they let people like me in," Jeremy said. He shifted his weight and I bit the inside of my lip.

The first class seats were big, and comfy, but they were still seats, and we were still trapped here for hours. Under normal circumstances that would be fine for me and just approaching tolerable for Jeremy - and not from the right side, either. I squeezed his hand.

"I'd like to think I'd be more useful right now if I wasn't… freaking out about flying," I said, awkwardly.

"You don't have to be useful, Jaime." Jeremy paused. "We could still try talking."

I cast my eyes around the plane and saw the seatbelt light go dim. Well, at least there was that. People immediately started stirring, standing, stretching, and forming an awkward line at the bathroom. No ghost to be seen.

"You know sometimes you get these… thoughts… that you weren't expecting," I said, slowly. "And they come and go without any reason."

"Thoughts about things like the plane crashing," Jeremy said. "It makes sense, with the weather."

I thought about that, and shook my head. "It started before the turbulence."

"So it's not… part of the environment," Jeremy said.

I couldn't help but smile a little. It was nice to have somebody around who remembered the things I said, even when they couldn't experience ghosts themselves. A residual would have been easy to deal with: the memory of a person playing on repeat. Unsettling, but predictable. "No. Just startling thoughts. _Intrusive_ thoughts."

"If these thoughts aren't because of the environment, maybe someone you saw triggered them. Someone who reminded you of something," he said. He tilted his head slightly, waiting for my assessment.

I ran my eyes over the other people in the cabin. The thing about a haunted person is that they don't carry around a sign with them. I had met genuinely haunted people before. They were usually raising their hands in the audience, desperate to tell me about the haunting. That wouldn't help me here.

"Maybe. I don't know."

Jeremy thought about that for a minute. "Perhaps you need to talk to Eve about it," he said. I raised both my eyebrows, wondering how he was going to ease her into the conversation. He cleared his throat. "Eve. Your… therapist."

He just gave me a small grin in return for the look I shot him at _that._

"I'm going to go to the bathroom now."

***

By the way, first class bathrooms? Not that different from coach. I was honestly disappointed. The only unusual thing I spotted was a lotion dispenser.

I flipped the cover down and sat on the tiny seat. I probably had two, three minutes before anyone would think I was taking too long. And the door was thin, I had to be quiet, too. At least I had a watch to keep track of things.

It took ninety-three seconds before Eve appeared, and the look on her face when she realized where she was… well. "What in the actual hell, Jaime?"

Of course, she didn't actually fit in the room. Her shoulders were disappearing through the wall. I couldn't even see the sword I knew was strapped to her back. Her hair was yanked back into a ponytail and her clothes were kind of rumpled.

"Three hours left in this flight and I keep getting screamed at by a ghost who thinks we're crashing," I whispered, quickly.

Eve frowned, and crossed her arms over her chest."I can't banish it from the bathroom," I said, gesturing at the tiny space around me. "I didn't exactly bring my kit in my carry-on." The TSA wouldn't let a water bottle through, let alone the small human body parts my kit would've contained.

Sighing, Eve lowered her arms. "I can check in. But it's not here now?"

"No…"

"I'm in the middle of something," Eve admitted, her mouth twisted uncomfortably. She jerked her chin up and her eyes went distant. My stomach dropped, and I tried not to imagine four more hours of random screaming. "But I'll come back and check in."

Great. And the ghost would probably pop in and out between her visits. "I can't stay in the bathroom," I finally said. I was coming close to having been in there for three minutes already.

"I'll walk up and down." Her chin jerked again and she waved her hand like she was batting at something. "Coming!" she snapped. She gave me one last look before blinking out. "Hey, you can handle it. You've handled worse."

Groaning, I went back to Jeremy to do just that.

He saw the look on my face and began to speak, but I held up my hand. I waited to say anything until I'd fully settled back into my seat. "On second thought, I'm not sure that calling Eve would be that helpful. And it's so expensive."

"There's not much of the flight left," Jeremy said.

I nodded. "You should stretch your legs. Circulation, you know."

Then I watched him walking, focusing on his legs moving back and forth. Hopefully this flight wasn't driving him nuts. Hopefully he didn't wish we had taken a cruise, or something. Hopefully he wouldn't regret agreeing to go to an extremely crowded tourist city - maybe I should arrange for us to go up to Scotland or something -

"WE'RE GOING TO CRASH!"

Part of me must have been prepared. I didn't jump or yelp when the ghost reappeared in my face. I was calm enough that Jeremy didn't even immediately run to my side.

Instead I took a deep breath and stared the person down. Her hair looked even worse, like she had been tearing at it. But this time she raised her hand and yanked down a yellow oxygen mask out of nowhere. As soon as it was over her face, she started gasping, her shoulders jerking back and forth with each breath.

Okay. Okay.

I looked around at the rest of the passengers. Tried to find someone who was breathing harder, too. Tried to find someone who might be thinking about the plane crashing.

All I could focus on was the man across the aisle, who'd spoken to me earlier. The one I hadn't been able to concentrate on at all. Except now he looked worse than he had during the turbulence. Probably. I couldn't completely remember what he'd looked like during the turbulence. He certainly didn't look like he was about to encourage anyone to find the thrill in flying.

Instead, he had his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. His fingers were clenched in his hair and his breaths were so even I thought he had to be counting them out.

When I looked back at the ghost, she screamed behind her mask.

I reached out and brushed my fingers against where the mask would have been, if it was real. And then Jeremy came back and I did jump, because apparently I could expect screams in my face but not him returning to his chair.

"Sorry," he said. He paused, then slipped past me and into his seat. "How are you feeling?"

I swallowed.

Me. A ghost. Jeremy. A plane full of strangers.

Time to face facts.

"Still think you can help me sleep?"

***

Eve appeared between us while Jeremy and I were waiting at baggage claim.

"Did you know," I asked him, ignoring the way Eve was eyeing the people from our flight, "that sometimes people with traumatic histories are calm during major crises and get shaken up from little problems?"

"I've heard that," Jeremy said. He turned to me. "Who told you?"

"Oh, you know. My therapist." I eyed a black bag coming around the conveyor belt and flipped it over - but there wasn't any neon string tied to the front and I let it fall back and wind around the corner.

A new batch of luggage was coughed onto the conveyor belt. I spotted a pop of neon green and stepped forward, but bumped into someone else.

"Sorry about that, honey."

"No problem." I flashed a smile at our neighbor from the flight. He looked a little better now, though more drained than I would've expected from someone who had slept for most of the journey. "Looking for a black suitcase too?"

He laughed softly. "How'd you guess?"

I smiled again. My heartbeat had picked up a little. It had been a long time since I'd had to approach someone cold with news of a ghost. You got your skeptics in the audience, but this was different. And an airport was a bad place for a confrontation.

Still… I had to try. "Thanks for helping me out back there. I guess the turbulence just really shook me up," I said.

"Oh, that's fine," he said, shrugging. He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. "It happens to the best of us."

"I know that flying is safer than driving," I said, looking up at him like I was the most casual thinker in the airport. Absolutely no one he should be worrying about. (Not that most strange men worried about someone like me talking to them.) "But that storm got the best of me. Rain is scarier in the air than on the road."

The man hesitated before nodding, and immediately focused back on the luggage going around the conveyor belt. Jeremy moved forward to grab the suitcase with the green string and pull it off to the side. He didn't interrupt me, and I kept watching for our other suitcase.

Eve drifted over in front of us, which made my spotting task a little harder. I tried not to make any faces at her expression. The neighbor didn't need to notice that kind of thing.

"Planes are inspected and everything, though, I guess." I shrugged. "And if you've been through one accident, what are the odds you'll be in another?" I laughed this time, and tried to ignore the man's face tinting green. "Not that I've been in a crash. But my friend, anyway," I said, gesturing in Jeremy's direction.

"Yeah, yeah," the man said, softly. He wiped his hand along his mouth. "I think that might be my suitcase," he said. He started walking in the other direction.

Shit, I'd messed that up.

Taking a breath, I stepped around Eve to follow him. "I'm sorry if I upset you. I'm so clumsy, I just wanted to thank you for-"

"It's all right."

I felt a cold prickle on the back of my neck and looked up. The ghost was standing behind him: oxygen mask on her face, eyes glazed above it. Eve moved around and I lifted my hand slightly for her to hold off for just a second.

The man tugged a suitcase off the conveyor belt and his hand slipped on the handle. I helped pull it upright. "Thank you," he said. "I study crashes, is all. I don't like to bring the work out with me." He cleared his throat. "If you panic on your flight home, just remember: crashes, very rare."

I nodded. He was about to leave. And the ghost was still following him - I had to do something. "You know, I … Sometimes I just get feelings about people," I said, already braced for the frown he shot my way. "I just wanted to say… I got a good feeling about you, when you talked to me on the plane."

"Well… thank you," he said, beginning to back away.

The ghost woman was beginning to pull at her hair. And Eve was eyeing her coldly.

"I also got the feeling - the impression, really, that you were worried about someone," I said, rapidly. "And you don't have to be. I think. I mean. Things work out. People end up in good hands. Even if they're not ours."

Eve put a hand on the ghost woman's arm, and they both disappeared from my line of sight. The man looked a little greener, too. I shifted my weight and hoped he wouldn't call me a freak before fleeing the scene.

"Yeah," he said. He backed right into the space where the ghost woman had been standing a moment before. "Thanks."

Then he turned and left.

***

"How are you doing?" Jeremy asked. He was changing clothes already.

I fell back on our hotel bed and started looking through brochures for nearby restaurants. Sure, it wasn't even ten AM (nearly three PM back in New York), but I was running on empty. If we didn't eat soon I'd fall asleep.

"I'm okay." I glanced at him over top of the brochure. "It's frustrating when I can't help."

Jeremy folded the shirt he'd worn on the airplane and placed it on a chair. Then he walked over to the bed and crawled onto it, his knees making the mattress depress around me.

I pressed my legs together and smiled up at him. "Hey there."

He stopped when his hands were resting on either side of my elbows. "You did the best you could," he said.

"Yeah." I reached up and brushed his hair back from his face. Then I left my fingers tangled in it. Even after traveling cross-country, it was soft, and smelled … well, nice. "Normally when I run into ghosts, they're free-floating."

"Mmm." He nuzzled my hand. "I think we did fairly well talking about that in public," he said. Then he cleared his throat. "But we should have a ghost signal for this trip. Help me know when to whisk you out of a place."

I made a face. "I hope we don't see any ghosts."

"There's all the historical locations we'll be visiting," Jeremy drawled. Then he grinned briefly. "And I like the whisking."

"Point." I drew my hand away from his hair and ran my fingers down his chest, drawing little circles on his skin. He held still and just stared at me. I wet my lips, thinking it was nice to stretch out after being bunched up in the airport for a while. "Thanks for keeping me sane on the flight."

"It was my pleasure."

"If I see a ghost, I'll tap the inside of your wrist."

"That sounds good."

"But I'll keep my fingers crossed for no more ghosts. Even if it means no whisking." I fought back a yawn. "Should we try to eat now?"

Jeremy smiled slightly. "Not right now."

He dipped his head and pressed his lips to mine.

Okay, well.

Maybe I wasn't about to fall asleep after all.


End file.
